Family Fun Magazine Names Traverse City One Of ‘America’s Top 10 Tourist Towns’

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Readers of Family Fun Magazine have named Traverse City one of America’s Top 10 Tourist Towns. They also voted the nearby Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore as one of America’s 10 Best Vacation Spots and as one of its Top 10 Nature Escapes.

A publication of the Meredith Parents Network, Family Fun has a national circulation of over 2 million. For its April issue, it asked 2,000 moms with children from ages 8-12 to rate 360 popular destinations in four regions of the U.S. The results offered some “delightful surprises,” said writer Kevin Markey.

“Who would have predicted that nature escapes would claim seven of the top ten spots?” he wrote. “Or that a museum – Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History – would outscore all but the top two amusement parks?”

A small coastal resort area on the northwest coast of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, Traverse City has long been treasured by Michigan residents for its matchless scenery, colorful history, imaginative cuisine and laid-back friendliness, as well as the low humidity, warm sunshine and cool coastal breezes that make its summers so comfortable. Until recently it has remained relatively unknown outside the state, but word has been spreading quickly during the past few years.

Last month, Traverse City was listed by the prestigious Fodor’s travel group as one of America’s 10 Best Small Towns. In January the online travel site Away.com named Traverse City to its list of ten “Best Four-Day Vacation Spots” for 2013.

In the past year, National Geographic has named Traverse City one of its Top 10 Summer Trips for 2012, while the Travel Channel ranked it among the Top Seven Beer Destinations in North America, Budget Travel called it one of the 11 “Coolest Winter Places in America,” and Money Magazine ranked it among the Top 25 Best Cities to Retire.